


12th Chapter Break; Lazy8's Relationships Challenge

by orphan_account



Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Gen, Tuuri bonds, Tuuri fights, Tuuri is ample and cuddly, Tuuri is mighty, Tuuri is the centre of the universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-06
Updated: 2016-10-01
Packaged: 2018-08-13 09:57:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 11,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7972633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the Relationships Challenge, I present to you a smorgasbord of Tuuri-related angst, platonic fluff, badassery and general goofiness that no one asked for yet everyone will be subjected to</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Lalli: the cousin (love and protect at all costs)

**Author's Note:**

> This challenge will be written for Tuuri's character. It occurred to me that she doesn't serve much role other than being the token sassy chubby chick in the background (so me, essentially) because I haven't delved that deeply into her character, other than that one prompt I did where she for some reason hugs Sleipnope. So here comes this challenge to rectify this. Let's hope I don't maul her characterisation too badly
> 
> Kicking this off with a bit of Hotakainen family drama. Drama-ish.

Probably from her conception, Tuuri has been a restless person. She kicked incessantly in the womb, her parents said, as if she was impatient to be born and trying to make her own exit. She walked before she was eight months old. It was almost unheard of in Mikkeli, and at the village’s encouragement, her parents had her checked several times to confirm she wasn’t a changeling. As soon as she had her legs underneath her, she was getting into everything and in the way of everyone. Her parents would put her on one of those baby-harnesses to prevent her from sticking her nose into rabbit’s warrens or the hollows of trees when they went for a walk in the woods.

When she learned to talk, she didn’t stop. Every day she had to have new words. She would ask questions as other people breathed and grew frustrated on the frequent occasions when her parents would responds ‘I don’t know’ to one of her questions. So by the age of two, she was trying to teach herself to read.  
She probably would have been more literate than her parents by her fourth birthday had Lalli not been born. Tuuri was distracted by the arrival of this new little person- infatuated, is the word- and wanted to stick to her aunt and uncle’s side at all times so as to observe her new cousin’s progress as best she could. It surprised no one that Lalli’s first word was ‘Tuuri’.

And once Lalli was able to walk, Tuuri was back to her mischief. Lalli’s parents would turn their back on him for a moment and when they turned, find he was gone and the diminutive kidnapper retreating rapidly with the toddler in tow.  
He was her partner in exploration, whether he liked it or not. Most of the time he did. Lalli came to see Tuuri as an extension of himself. Like a very bossy limb that was slightly older and much louder than him. 

As children, they were rarely seen apart. If one was seen without the other they were asked “Where’s your other half?”  
Lalli often felt compelled to find Tuuri and bring her back to the person who had asked, proving he was not an incompetent cousin.

For the first part of his life, Lalli was Tuuri’s invaluable partner in crime. It did not matter that his reality was different from hers. It did not matter that some days he would not talk and other days he did a thing his parents called ‘info-dumping’, where he might talk for half an hour without pause. He eventually grew out of that and into this strange silence that still grips him now.  
Lalli retreated into himself for obvious reasons. Tuuri’s answer to the obscene tragedy that claimed Mikkeli was to throw herself at the world. She claimed any and every opportunity that floated her way. She seized life by the throat and made it squeal, made it promise to tell her its secrets and the places where it had hid the best of itself, if she would only loosen her grip a little.

Tuuri did not look back for a long time, convinced she could not afford to. Many years passed before she could summon the courage to confront what had happened to her and her family. So much time that when she finally did look back, she realised Lalli was no longer following her footsteps.

Her pale, faithful shadow had gone and left no indication as to where she might find him again.

 

Tuuri hears Lalli’s soft footsteps trail into the Tank.  
She listens to him as he peels off his boots and twists a cramp out of his spine. Secretly, she loves this noise. Sometimes her cousin is so alien she needs a reminder that they are both human- the click of his vertebrae righting themselves after a long day of work do this job beautifully, so that a smile always rises to Tuuri’s lips when she hears it.

 

Tuuri opens her mouth to call out. Instead, she stands and peers carefully around the door of the cockpit to look at him.

Lalli has gotten so tall. In Mikkeli, they raced each other. There was a door-frame in their grandmother’s house marked with Onni’s climbing height. Tuuri and Lalli became obsessed with outstripping each other in growth, despite Lalli’s obvious age disadvantage, and assisted that their grandmother make a new mark each week. Usually, there was a rematch. Lalli was standing on his tip-toes. Tuuri isn’t that tall- her hair is just extra poofy today.  
And now he’s far too tall for Tuuri to ever hope to catch up; at least a head higher than her.

If height was still something they talked about, Lalli would be smug about this.

Finally, Tuuri speaks “Hard day?”

“Yes.” he does not raise his eyes to look at her.

“I had one too. I must have catalogued fifteen books.” she holds up her right hand “Damn good thing I’m ambidextrous, because this hand almost fell off around noon. I got such a cramp in my finger. Can you imagine if I had to do all that writing with just one hand?”

Lalli shakes his head. He cannot imagine it.

“How about you? Good bill of health?”

Still without facing her, Lalli lifts his left hand in silence. A bandage has been wrapped around the palm recently, already blushing with blood.

“What happened?”

“Cut my hand on a rock.”

“Does it hurt?”

“Yeah. It’s an open wound.”

Tuuri is not sure if she should be smarting from that icy comment, or laughing. At some point they forgot how to laugh with each other. They spend most of their time laughing at each other now. Tuuri does it, for the most part, because Lalli and humour are not things which care to associate all that often. 

She forces a smile “Do you need a painkiller?”

“No. Save it for an emergency.”

“An open wound can be an emergency.”

“I mean something like Sigrun’s arm. Where will she be if it gets worse and we’ve used all the painkillers on little cuts?”

Tuuri bristles “Well you don’t have to make me sound like an idiot. I’m just concerned about your open wound, alright?”

She leaves before he can give her an answer. One of the only times Lalli will talk freely is when they get into an argument- a volley, as Onni calls it, because they just pass the same redundant points back and forth, picking up more power and ferocity with each verbal swat, until one of them misses a beat in the rhythm and storms off the court in a funk.

“I hope it turns septic.” Tuuri hisses under her breath.

 

She becomes slowly aware of having to wait. Having to wait for him- has she ever done that before? Has Tuuri ever truly been aware of her cousin’s absence in the way she becomes in the following days?  
There has never been time to think about it. In the time before, they were together all of the time. Even apart, they were together. Tuuri used to tell her mother she could feel Lalli like a candle inside her stomach. She knew he was there. He was there because he was a light glowing through her ribs and she knew she pouring through his ribs in the same way.

And then Mikkeli was burned and everyone except Onni died, or became as good as dead, and at some point the light was snuffed out without either of them noticing. Or perhaps Lalli did notice. Perhaps it is the only thing Lalli can think about- or it was, until he finally gave in and became occupied with his own life.  
Got sick of waiting for Tuuri to come back to him, to realise he had never attempted to catch up to her in the first place. Got sick of lingering over the coals in his ribs for any sign of any spark to indicate Tuuri was still with him.

Now knowing what is missing, Tuuri is condemned to wait inside the Tank and hope Lalli has become strong and wise enough to survive in the Silent World.

 

“I need to go with him.” insists Tuuri “You’re not hearing what I’m saying.”

To Tuuri’s intense frustration, Sigrun’s voice remains level and reasonable “I am hearing what you’re saying and I’m telling you it’s not going to happen.”

“It has to!”

“Tuuri, you’re a civvie. You’re outside of the walls of your town for, like, the first time in eleven years, you’re not immune, you have nothing but the basic spells for protection-”

“I have Lalli too! Besides, have you ever seen what a basic Finnish spell can do? I can make a weapon out of the simplest cooking spell!”

Sigrun cocks an eyebrow “Be that as it may, you’re not going anywhere. What do you think would happen to us if something happened to you? We’d lose our driver. We’d lose the only person who can speak Lalli’s native language. We’d lose morale like Hel, Tuuri. You know what it’s like to lose someone, don’t you? Imagine it happening out here, where we can’t get away from that death.”

Tuuri takes a deep breath. Several deep breaths. Her eyes stray over Sigrun’s shoulder, to the glint of grey hair turned silver under sunlight that is so much like her own.  
“It’s the anniversary of the fall of Mikkeli tomorrow. I can’t be alone for it. Without him, I mean.” Tuuri wipes her eyes, hating herself for shedding tears in front of Sigrun “I need to be with my family. He’s the only family I have here. I need to be with him. I need to see he’s alright and alive and within arm’s reach. Frankly, I don’t care if I do get in his way tomorrow. I don’t care if I get us both killed. At least we’ll be together when we die.”

A few moments of silence follow this. Emil is trying not to stare. Mikkel politely continues hanging the laundry as if he does not hear the raised voices. Reynir has gone quiet and aimed his eyes at the ground, turning the end of his braid around a finger.  
And Lalli stares right at Tuuri in a way that makes her wonder if she switched to Finnish at some point in that tirade.

Sigrun lays a hand on Tuuri’s shoulder and looks her dead on the eye “Tuuri.”

“Yes.”

“You are absolutely not permitted to die tomorrow. If I let you do this, you have to listen to everything Lalli says. Do what he does. He is experienced. You are not. If you try to do anything on your own you will die and you’ll probably kill the rest of us without your expertise on the Tank. Do you understand what you’re asking the team to do? The call I’m making right now, as the team’s leader? Do you understand this could kill us all?”

“Yes.”

“Alright. Get some sleep. You’ll need it.”

 

“You shouldn’t have done that.” says Lalli.

He offers her a hand. She takes it and steps smartly over a deep hole that halves the road.

“Aren’t you glad I did?”

Lalli frowns at her. Not a normal frown either- the one he wears as a permanent expression, but one of those frowns that means he is genuinely considering violence out of frustration.  
Tuuri responds with a sweet smile.

“If you ever pull something like this again, I’ll bury you myself.” he says with a kind of satisfied finality. 

“Sounds fair to me. Where are we going, by the way?”

“We’re going to scout a few locations. And I mean I am. You’re going to stay right behind me. Touch nothing.”

Although they are walking in the dead middle of the road and there is no threat to be seen, smelled, heard or even imagined in the derelict houses that line the road, Lalli ends up holding her hand. He just does not trust her to control her curiosity. Truthfully, Tuuri is glad of her cousin’s concern; this is the first time she has gone out into the Silent World with actual permission! It adds a kind of sheen to the eerie surroundings, knowing that she may return to the camp and gush about the grief that soaks the place and the complete destruction everywhere without fear of reprimand.  
Maybe if she behaves herself today Sigrun will ease up a little bit and let her out more often? Tuuri has actually been giving Reynir secret driving lessons in preparation for the auspicious occasion that she might be allowed to accompany an actual scouting mission. That way, if she does die horribly like doughy civvies like her are supposed to in the Silent World, Reynir can still drive for the rest of the mission and whack the engine into submission when it plays up.

Tuuri is not totally irresponsible, after all.

She and Lalli move in silence. Lalli barely makes a sound on the cracked ground. His footsteps are more like a breeze; so slight and fleeting that the ground is barely sure anything has touched it at all before he has moved on. Meanwhile, Tuuri stumbles enthusiastically into every small pothole and trips lightly over a few of the larger cracks. When it comes time to climb over a piece of road that has collapsed entirely into a fissure, there is a moment where it seems likely that Tuuri is about to fall into this pit.  
But with a sure grip on her collar and some serious upper-arm strength, Lalli manages to avert disaster.

“See,” he says, as they lay panting at the edge of the crater “This is why I don’t want you here.”

“Oh hush. You worry too much. I’m fine, aren’t I? Thanks to you and your muscles. I mean, wow, Lal, I knew you’d gotten strong with all this scouting, but that was just insane!”

The frown again. A little less intense this time, though, so Tuuri responds with a smile that is just a tad less saccharine.

“This reminds me of when we were kids.”

“Which parts?”

“Remember when I used to make you race me up trees?”

“I remember the time you knew you were going to lose, so you broke off a branch and hit me with it.”

Tuuri snorts “Oh my gods! I forgot I did that! What a little shit of a kid, huh?”

“That was the same time when I kicked you in the face.”

Tuuri laughs, muting it behind her hand in fear of attracting un-wanted attention “I remember! I fell off the tree into a bush. And I came home with an old bird’s nest in my hair.”

“And your mom was so mad at both of us that she chased us around the yard with a shoe.”

“Gods, our family was weird, weren’t they?”  
This time, Tuuri reaches for his hand. 

The next hour goes by in a companionable silence, apart from the occasional warning of a weak floorboard or a puddle. Lalli points out a dried troll’s sac to her and even consents to let her poke it with a very, very long metal pole, on the condition that she first wraps her hands in a bit of old curtain and holds her breath behind her mask. They are startled by a herd of deer wandering through an over-grown café. Each party stares at the other, frozen in nearly identical expressions of shock. A single fawn breaks the spell of fear when it comes over, puts its hooves on Lalli’s shoulders and licks him upside the face, and then the rest of the tension ebbs away as Tuuri falls on her ass from laughter.

Soon, they are surrounded by deer who are all very interested in sampling the taste of Finn with soft, ferny tongues.

“If even one of these is infected,” Tuuri says as she pats the flank of a large doe “I’m a dead woman.”

“They’re fine. I would smell it in their spirits if they were carrying the sickness.”

“Hey, that one has fur the same colour as Emil’s hair.”

The Emil-deer proceeds to bump its muzzle directly into Lalli’s mouth, like a ham-fisted kiss, which proves to be such a source of mirth for Tuuri that she has to go down on all-fours to recover. The deer surround her like a crowd of concerned on-lookers and continue licking her ears and the nape of her neck until she can stand again.  
Loathe as Tuuri is to part from the deer (and the deer from their Finnish salt licks), they have to move on to scout out other buildings. Tuuri walks behind Lalli and holds onto his hood for steering and comfort. When they pass an old department store, Tuuri picks up the discarded plastic head of a mannequin and declares it a trophy of battle. Again, Lalli makes her wrap her hands with old curtain (which he brought along a great swathe of in case of emergencies such as this) to touch and carry it. 

Only once do they see a troll. On the way back from the trip, as the sun sinks and burns the sky orange, Tuuri sees a troll up close for the first time since Mikkeli. Surprisingly, she is neither scared nor angry. She simply lets go of Lalli’s hood and urges him forward with a gentle nudge in the back.

“Show that troll what you’re made of.”

“Blood and meat.” says Lalli, holding up his injured hand.

She shoos him on.

The troll wanders out into the middle of the road and regards them in a toad-like heap. The instruments of propulsion- some kind of weird combination of what look like penguin flippers and human arms- stick out of its multitudinous rolls of fat. Lalli draws his dagger, but does not touch the troll. He cannot with Tuuri so close to him.  
Tuuri watches dispassionately as the invisible force of Lynx tears the troll neatly down the middle and flings the filthy halves in either direction, so she will not have to walk through the corpse.

“You and Lynx are getting good at this.”

“We’ve had time to practice.”

Unexpectedly, Tuuri finds herself crying “I wish you didn’t.”

 

“I’m getting worried about that twig.”  
Sigrun stands up from the front steps of the Tank.

From the depths of the Tank’s steaming hood, Tuuri peeps “Why?”

“He’s taking such a long time.”

“He’s fine.”

“How do you know that?” asks Sigrun sceptically “Some kind of Finnish telepathy?”

Tuuri pats herself on the stomach and smiles cryptically “Something like that. Would you mind terribly if I put a mannequin head on the front of the Tank for a hood ornament?”


	2. Reynir: new best buddy (even though his prior experience with friendship constitutes of emotional bonding with sheep)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> While getting spectacularly lost, Tuuri and Reynir bond in the way only two people trapped in a car with each other can.

“I’m so sorry.”

“No. Don’t be. I should be. I know what you’re like with directions. I know you’re useless. I know you can’t help it.”

“No, really-”

“Reynir. You cannot blame yourself for- I don’t even know what is wrong with your sense of direction, but you can’t blame yourself for getting us lost. I should have known better than to let you guide us. The one who gets into a crate of food bound for Bornholm and ends up in the unexplored regions of the Silent World. This is a mess entirely of my own design.”

The severity of their situation catches up with Tuuri in a swift, painful blow that is at once stinging and smothering. She is briefly paralysed by the ludicrous situation she has gotten them in, just by allowing Reynir to hold the map. It all proves too potent- too heady to be beared.  
Tuuri slides from her chair and, with a deep steadying breath, prostrates herself on the ground. She lies face-up and can only see Reynir hanging over her, his face like a freckled full-moon, his hair alarming and lion-like from this angle. And then the ceiling of the Tank. There’s a dent just above the driver’s seat from when an unexpected troll roar made Mikkel jump and hit his head on the ceiling.

“Are you ok?”

“I’m ok.” says Tuuri. She finds the contours and subtle colours of the dent to be immensely satisfying “I’m just thinking about my life choices. How ridiculous they are, I mean. I mean…how did I get here? Here, into a retconned military vehicle with cat ears, populated exclusively by lunatics and our pet shepherd, who’s apparently fine with fields and mountains and stuff, but the moment you hand him a map he doesn’t know his freckled elbow from his freckled a-”

“I said I’m sorry,” Reynir offers her a hand up “I can’t say much more than that. Except for asking what you want me to do next.”

Tuuri grasps his hand without the intention of pulling herself up. Instead she cradles it, admiring his long, calloused digits “Your fingers look remarkably like a witch’s. All thin and knobbly with callouses.”

“Uh, Tuuri? Priorities. I know we’re messed up because I messed up, but let’s keep our head in the game.”

He is right. Half of everyone Tuuri truly loves in the world are outside in the Silent World right now. In some sopping ruin surrounded by people who will either help to keep him safe or inadvertently kill him. Frankly, the way Sigrun’s been aiming her gun this last week, Tuuri would hedge her bets on being handed a semi-decapitated cousin at the end of the day rather than a healthy but shaken cousin.   
Sad but true. Well, depending on how protective Emil will turn out to be in a true life-or-death situation. So far he’s a bit like a lovelorn goat. Following the object of his admiration about the farm, accepting each of the sparing pats he is given with semi-transcendent joy. Only time and fatal danger will tell if that goat can become a snarling cat, or dog, or whatever else is domesticated and loyal. One of those things.

The thought of Lalli being stuck in some crumbling building with only their fellow idiots for company makes Tuuri nervous. Nervous enough to finally pull herself up, but Reynir is not expecting it, so rather than acting as a pulley, he just falls on top of her. Tuuri heaves him off impatiently and plants herself in the driver’s chair.

“Alright Reynir, give me the map.”

He offers her the map from the ground.

“Thanks. Ok, which street were we on when I handed this to you?”

“Uh.” he says helpfully.

“Excellent! Now do that again except with words!”

“I don’t know?”

“No, helpful words, gods-dammit.”

“I think it was this one?” Reynir kneels at her side and points to a long street- one of the main arteries of the city, passing through what would have been a major shopping area before.

Thankfully, he’s pointing to a street that Tuuri has a memory of. A vague recollection of driving down a street that was very much like it in shape at least.

“Ok, good. Now how should we backtrack?”

They try several times to sketch with a pencil a likely-looking route. Each time they seem to be making progress, one of them remembers a crater in that road or an obstacle, trollish or otherwise, that lead to another detour, that lead to one of those allies made narrow by rubble and ruin that make Tuuri so nervous.  
By the end of this exercise, they have discovered a path. A very, very long path with a lot of detours through tiny roads and allies and at one point Tuuri decides they are just going to have to drive through one of the houses. Luckily, she remembers this one is without a roof and doubts any trolls populating the place will have made a shelter of the place, being that there’s not much shelter to be had.

“We’ve got a problem.” says Reynir.

“I know. Which one are you thinking about?”

“Look,” he points to the end of their meticulously mapped route “We got really lost. This is only going to take us back to where we were before I got us lost. It’s gonna be at least an hour, right?”

“Right.” assuming, she adds mentally, that we don’t fall into another under-ground parking lot that takes two hours of exploration and another of hard driving to get us out of. 

“So it will be almost dark by then. After that it’s still going to take us a little while to get to the place where Sigrun said we should pick them up. What will they think if we leave them in the dark? What if they come looking for us and get lost and we don’t find them until the morning when they’re all dead of hypothermia?” by the end of this little tirade, Reynir’s pale face has lost any trace of colour and his voice has gone squeaky with fear.

Thinking the better of slapping him, Tuuri places a hand on his shoulder and says evenly “Reynir. Do you honestly think a group with an enthusiastic Cleanser are going to freeze to death?”

His chest heaves in an attempt to bring his breathing back to normal “Well, no-”

“And do you really think they’ll get lost? They have Lalli.”

“What can Lalli do in the middle of the night?”

“Pretty much everything. He started out as a night-scout. That’s why he still likes sleeping during the day, you know.”

“Oh…I thought he was a skald, like you.”

Tuuri snorts “You couldn’t keep Lalli in a garage if you tied him down. Ok, so this is a big, rotten, nasty place, not the woods he’s so good with, but he can still work with it. Sigrun will watch out for them. Mikkel’s there to stitch back together whatever tries to fall off.”

Swallowing with difficulty, Reynir situates himself in the shotgun seat “So…so I didn’t kill us all?”

“No. You probably pissed the others off, but you’re sweet. It was a mistake by a very sweet person. Sigrun will probably just tell you to keep trying and, I don’t know, pat you on the head or something.”

Tuuri starts to reverse. Three-point turns have always been one of her least favourite manoeuvres, due in large part to the time she accidentally backed over Onni with a tractor while doing one. He fell between the tyres and got a little scraped by the under-carriage, and was very forgiving once Lalli had stopped laughing long enough to rescue him.   
Still, she can’t help but expect the organic crunch of her brother’s body beneath the tyres each time she bangs one of these turns out. It sets her teeth on edge. Her stomach churns with nausea. Usually, by the time she finishes the turn successfully, she has to dash for the bathroom to see whether the acidic tickle in her throat is a genuine threat or left-over panic.

She finds herself telling Reynir all of this, who is very sympathetic.

“I can drive pretty well by now. Why don’t you let me make those turns from now on?”

Tuuri has slowly been passing along her driving skills to Reynir. Partly because it is something to fill the dull afternoons when the others are all away and Mikkel is asleep, and partly because she doesn’t think it’s wise to have only one person who can drive on a mission being conducted from a Tank. 

“I kinda need to master these…I mean if I’m really having trouble, then I guess you can go ahead and do it.” she is reluctant to allow Reynir any real control over the Tank. If he becomes the driver, then what is she aside from the engine-whacker, translator and liaison between the grumpy scout and the rest of the mission? “Ah, Tuonela, why not? Tomorrow you can drive for a little while.”

Reynir brightens and Tuuri is glad for the small sacrifice. What does her pride matter, in the grand scheme of things? Reynir arrived here by accident. Fate, she thinks, because obviously Lalli and Onni are meant to usher him down his own magical path. Ukko does not make mistakes. Or if he does then they work out in the end anyway, so it’s better for all parties involved.   
For now Reynir is content to act as the navigator.

“Left turn here…watch out for the lamp-post.”

“Here?”

“No, left.”

“That is left.”

“No that’s right.”

“My left or your left?”

“The left I’m pointing to.”

“I’m going left- oh gods! What was that?”

“That was the lamp-post I told you about!”

The sky grows gloomy with the impending dusk. Streets are harder to see, so Tuuri flicks on the head-lamps.

“I hate using these. Makes me so nervous.”

Reynir nods “But I like it when we’ve put up the black-out curtains,” which are literally just a spare set of black sheets that Mikkel tore into window-sized pieces to cover the windows at night “And it’s all bright and warm inside. It’s very cozy.”

“Like a metal womb.”

“Huh. I was thinking more of the hearth at home. Sometimes it feels like I’m at home with all of my siblings again…except it’s you guys and I barely understand what anyone is saying.”

Tuuri pats him on the shoulder “Don’t worry. Usually it’s just Sigrun and Mikkel debating about how best to kill trolls. Emil calls it ‘farmers vs soldiers’.”

Reynir sighs “I miss a lot. I guess I better make more of an effort with my studies- hey, watch the truck!”

“What truck-” asks Tuuri shortly before the Tank punches through the rusted body of a lorry about twice the Tank’s size.

“There’s a grossling on the windshield.” Reynir gathers his cloak about him and pulls it over his head like a blanket.

“Yeah,” Tuuri swallows nervously “I see it.”

A tiny thing. No bigger than a squirrel. Tuuri flicks the wipers on and watches with grim satisfaction as the thing is crowded off the windshield. A faint crack beneath the wheels tells her the back-wheels have disposed of it.

A little while later, Tuuri asks “What would you be doing right now if you weren’t here?”

Reynir peers over the edge of the map at her “Hum…being myself, I guess. I sit around reading during the winter. The snow gets too heavy to take the sheep out, but I don’t like not knowing how they’re doing. So I go sit in their paddock in the barn and read.”

Tuuri cannot help but crack up “Wow. That’s cute.”

He laughs weakly “Kinda pathetic. Back in Iceland my best friends are all part of the same flock of sheep. The dogs prefer my father to me.”

“And now your friends are all lunatics.”

“I’m not really a friend, though, am I? I kind of sneaked on board.”

Shrugging, Tuuri stamps on the gas pedal to rev them past a particularly large grossling by the side of the road before Reynir can see it “I think the gods must have lead you here. Mine or yours. Maybe both of them working together.”

“Oh, you- you think my gods are real?”

“Uh, I know they’re real. Your magic doesn’t come from nowhere.”

He frowns “You’re very open to other pantheons. In Iceland they teach us our gods are the only real gods. And the Norwegians worship them in the wrong way- I always thought that was a bit arrogant.”

Tuuri cocks an eyebrow “What, really?”

“Really! Isn’t it ridiculous?”

“Yeah! One of the first things they taught Onni about after, you know, how not to kill himself with his magic was to respect the other gods. Lalli would know more about your gods if he hadn’t been eight when his real training…uh…well, ended. I don’t know. It’s weird the way some people in Iceland think. Where do they say we get our powers from?”

Reynir rolls his eyes “This is gonna sound really bigoted. They say all Finnish mages are just possessed by spirits.”

Tuuri laughs so hard she knocks her head against the head-rest “That’s a good one! They know all of us can do magic, right?”

Reynir shakes his head “You can?”

“Sure. Basic stuff. You’re a mage if you can see the spirits without the spirits’ permission. Want to see?”

He nods so hard Tuuri is afraid his head might bounce off the spine like a ball from a spring. She peels one hand away from the steering wheel, mutters something under her breath, and lights the fingertips of her hand with a flame about the size of a small candle’s flame.  
The look on Reynir’s face is so bright she has to squint to look at him “Oh my gods that is the most amazing thing I have ever seen.”

“It’s just a basic spell.”

“I thought Finnish spells were all about asking the gods for their favour and enchanting the moon and stuff?”

“Well, yeah, and sometimes they’re about setting our hands on fire. I just asked my body to spare some of my energy, condense it outside my body and make it fire.” she clenches her fist and extinguishes the fire “I’ll be really hungry later.”

The talk of magic and spells and magical bigots keeps them entertained until they have reached the place where they were first lost. This is so exciting that it prompts a cheer from both of them. Kitty is woken up and comes in to swat Tuuri’s leg for daring to stir her from her slumber, then settles in Reynir’s lap.

The question of how to find the others is answered pretty swiftly. No sooner does Tuuri put the car in park is there an almighty thud on the hood of the Tank. Both of them scream. Kitty leaps onto the dashboard and paws at the windshield where Sigrun’s palms are.  
Somehow, Sigrun has hopped up onto the hood of the Tank to stare through the windshield. When they are finished screaming, she waves cheerfully to Reynir and Tuuri, and slides off the side of the Tank. In the time it takes for Tuuri’s heart-rate to return to normal, they’re all back inside the tank.

“We wondered where you went.” says Mikkel, shoving a ball of jackets into the sterilising cupboard.

“Sigrun was betting you went through another parking lot,” Emil struggles out of his boots “I thought I was going to have to make us a fire. Hel- I thought we were going to spend a night in the Silent World.”

“That would’ve been fun. Haven’t done that since I was a tiny thing.” Sigrun points to Lalli “Like, his age, back when I still had dreams and aspirations that weren’t all centred around killing trolls.”

Lalli pads into the cockpit and lays a hand on Tuuri’s shoulder, glancing at Reynir “Where were you?”

“A little lost.”

“Were you showing off?”

“I-”

“You smell like fire.”

Tuuri smiles briefly at Reynir. He smiles back, though he has no idea why they are smiling.

“Ah, chill out Lallicat. Me and Reynir were just bonding.”


	3. Emil: the emotionally scarred gay best friend (the one you always wanted and never had)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> While the others are off scouting around page 600 and such, Tuuri and Emil shoot the breeze on top of the Tank.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Those of you triggered by homophobia and aggressively Catholic grandmothers will want to watch out for the last little bit of this fic

“And if anything goes, like, extravagantly wrong, then go ahead and seal up the Tank and wait it out if you can. If you can’t then drive a few circles and come back by the agreed time.”

“What if the Tank has a mechanical malfunction?” asks Tuuri, more for her own amusement than out of any concern.

Sigrun fixes her with a cool stare “Then be a good skald and whack it into submission.”

“What if I can’t? What if Emil’s already dead too and Reynir’s too busy weeping over his pretty corpse to help me?”

“Then you’re all gonna die anyway. Brain Reynir, lie down on top of him and die too. Maybe spoon while you die. It’ll look all cute and tragic for us when we come back to your bodies.”

Obviously, Sigrun is not going to play Tuuri’s games. Tuuri wishes she would. It gives her a small measure of comfort to poke fun at her captain. She is perhaps even more nervous than Sigrun is about leaving the two non-immunes under Emil’s care for the first time, and even more determined to keep her fear hidden. To put on a brave face for Sigrun.  
If she performs well today, who knows? Sigrun might consent to bringing her along for the next proper mission. While she may not be a mage or a warrior of any substantial experience, Tuuri is sure she could handle herself well enough. After all she still has magic. She is still Finnish- a hard, cold survivor of generations that toiled and fought beside the frigid lakes, spun of sisu and grit. Worst to worst, if she is attacked by a troll, she can just torch it with one of the spells she sings to coax the cooking fire up to a suitable temperature.

But not today. Today, it is her role to play the simpering sickly maiden waving her brave warriors off to the battle.

“Be careful Lalli-cat.” she gives him a kiss on the temple and does not mind a bit that he goes stiff as a plank the moment she touches him.

“Take care of my cousin.” she makes sure to fix Mikkel with dewy eyes when she says this. Let him try resisting that. 

“Come back with your arm still attached, please.” she says goodbye to Sigrun with the customary punch in the shoulder. The good one, of course.

And off they go. It hurts her a little bit that Lalli is the only one to look back. Aren’t the other two concerned as well?  
Quickly, they disappear into the gloom of the derelict lobby. The building smells of sickness and death even from the outside. Creepers of black vines scale the building, trailing from this cracked window to the next, weaving a thick, slimy net of foliage that no other plant has dared to colonise yet.

Tuuri takes a step back and thumps Emil’s arm “See those vines?”

He squints “The stuff all over the building?”

“We called those Kalma’s Hair where I grew up. They’re a kind of weed that only grows where the Rash grows, and only where the Rash has left giants that couldn’t quite get off the ground. The ones who expired where they were. The seeds come from somewhere. I don’t know where. Maybe a plant evolved to take advantage of the new food source? Seems a bit quick to me, but anyway… The vine sinks into the ribcage like this,” she pokes Emil’s chest with a clawed hand and laughs as he flinches “And feast on the internal organs. When they’ve used up the lungs and the liver and all that good stuff, they move on to the marrow. They grow as long as there is water and flesh to feast on. It can take fifty years for a vine to use up a giant if it found a good and chunky one.”

“Ah.” Emil’s face is now the colour of flour “That’s interesting.”

“You mean disgusting beyond all reason?”

“Yes, that too.”

“Are they gone yet?” Reynir pops his head out of the window.

“What did he say?”

“He said- yeah Reynir, they’re gone! He just wanted to know if the others are gone yet.”

“Ok,” Reynir smiles brightly at Emil “Keep us safe, ok? I’m gonna go practice my rune-work in the backroom.”

“What did he say that time?”

“He said he wants to be buried in a shallow grave when you inevitably fail to save us, so the wolves can have a nice supper.”

Emil raises an eyebrow “I’ll take your word for that. You want to take the guard duty with me?”

This is what Tuuri likes about Emil. He invites her along on the chores that take her outside of the Tank or just a little bit away. He is aware of the claustrophobia that threatens to smash her patience and sanity to itty bitty pieces, and does his best to help her manage it with short hunting trips or by asking her help for foraging for healing herbs. And he will admit when he needs her help; particularly with the latter project, because Emil has spent most of his life having his medicine handed to him in either pills or tea that was already lovingly brewed for him.

Something about Sigrun’s well-meaning, over-bearing leadership has made Emil a lot more open to taking advice and criticism. Tuuri loves handing those two things out, as anyone who has known her for more than a week will notice.

As has become the custom, they climb the side of the Tank and sit on the hood of the Tank, their backs to the windshield. Sensing an opportunity for some serious petting, Kitty scrambles after them and plants herself on Tuuri’s stomach. Tuuri hopes Emil does not notice the way her entire body jiggles when the cat sits on her.  
But he catches a glimpse of it- the fantastic jelly wobble that accompanies every movement of Tuuri’s when she does not suck in, which she does, nearly constantly. 

“You’d think I would lose some weight on a diet of candle-sludge and venison.”

Emil laughs “What’s wrong with extra weight? I was sorry to lose mine when I joined the Cleansers. You never appreciate the extra insulation until you’ve lost it.”

“You? You were a fat kid?”

“I preferred the description ‘ample’, but yes, I was.”

“No way!”

“Why is that so hard to believe?”

“Show me your stomach.”

Emil lifts his layers up to his diaphragm. He’s ripped, of course, as Tuuri knows from a few sneaky glances when he changes shirts. 

“That’s why! That’s a six pack, right there. Do you know how long I’ve tried for one of those? The lives I’ve ruined! The people I’ve killed!”

He laughs “Maybe you’re just not made for it?”

Tuuri tries to cross her arms, but is obstructed from doing so by the cat. Instead she scratches Kitty between the ears and glares sourly out at the Silent World “My genetics have disappointed me, once again.”

Ah, the tender subject of her non-magical blood. Tuuri has noticed her tender subjects coming up more and more often around Emil. If Reynir is becoming something like a best friend, then Emil must be her second best. Her confidante in times of trial. It’s strange, the way this relationship has grown between them with so little coaxing or concern for its cultivation.  
It has come up between them as naturally as a healthy, normal vine might scale a tree in an effort to reach the sunlight the tree’s canopy hides. Something they both need, and something which is just easy and relaxing in practice.

“I used to think if I hit myself in the head hard enough, I would become a mage. Wake some latent mage thing in my head or something.” Tuuri sighs. Her fingers graze Kitty’s warm, exposed belly “I had to stop when I was six. My grandmother caught me and said she’d hold me over the dock by the ankles so the cool lake could cool me off if she ever caught me at it again.”

Emil’s smile is wan “I wish my grandmother did things like that for me.”

“What, threatened to dunk you head-first in a lake?”

“Something like that.”

“Did she…like, not pay any attention to you?”

Emil shrugs, fixing his eyes on some distant point on the grey horizon, his hands resting on the butt of his rifle “Not the kind of attention I wanted. She was an old-school Catholic.”

“Those still exist?”

“Only in Swedish boondocks, I think, like the place where I lived. My family was too rich to ever face losing their faith. That’s my theory anyway. I mean, my grandmother didn’t. When it came out that I was out of the closet and kissing boys like it was no big thing, she started praying at me. And I mean, like, she would come into my room while I was doing my homework and pray into my ear. Holy Asgard- the first time I brought a boyfriend home? She came into my room that night and stood on my bed and literally prayed over me- I woke up in the middle of the night with my 80-something grandmother bent over me, praying at the top of her wizened old lungs. I slept under my bed for a week after that.”

“Ukko almighty.”

“Yeah. It was weird.”

“That’s the worst thing I’ve ever heard.”

Emil shrugs “It wasn’t so bad, compared to other things.”

“But for you it was bad, right?”

Emil doesn’t respond. Tuuri lets a moment pass by in a grey silence, then throws her arm around Emil’s shoulder and squeezes.  
“Hey Em, look, there.” she points with her free-hand to a soggy shape limping by in the distance “It’s your grandma.”

Emil raises his rifle and nails the troll in one shot. A spray of black blood hits the pavement with a syrupy slap.

“Nice shot.”

“Let her pray that away.” he mutters under his breath, letting his head rest on Tuuri’s shoulder.

From the depths of the Tank, Reynir calls “Is everything alright?”

“Nothing to worry about Reynir! Emil and I are just working off a little bit of stress. With bullets.”

“That sounds healthy!” and he falls silent again.

Healthy is as healthy does, as her grandmother used to say. Tuuri doesn’t know if she really wants to know what Emil’s grandmother used to say, but it makes her feel a little better to know that she can make him feel better. It’s a small thing she can do and it still beats the hell out of sitting on her expansive ass in the Tank and reflecting on her own, selfish problems, when she could and should be out in the fresh air with a good friend.


	4. Sigrun: mentor (warrior queen, bad-ass boss, epitome of might)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sigrun teaches Tuuri some basic self-defence. It gets a little bit out of hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So is there some kind of challenge going on on the mature forum? Because the fic-dashboard thing is suddenly chock full of porn. Not complaining but dang, I didn't know so many people shipped Reynir and Lalli.

“Punch with your thumb on the outside this time and you won’t feel like you’ve broken your hand.”

Tuuri is still curled around her fist, on the floor, face-planted in the snow and not even caring that snow has begun to melt down her back. Sigrun stands over her. Her hands are on her hips and she waits a little impatiently for Tuuri to gather wits.  
But Tuuri is in no rush. The way she figures it, the longer she spends buried in cold snow, the greater the numbing effect will be and the less she will feel the fresh round of bruises Sigrun is about to give her.

“Tuuri,” says Sigrun, with an edge to her voice.

“Tuuri is not here. Tuuri has died.” groans Tuuri “This is her corpse speaking.”

“You haven’t even damaged your hand that much, kid, or at all. It just feels like it because there are a lot of nerve endings in the fingers,” stooping, Sigrun hooks a hand under her shoulder and turns Tuuri on her back “Look me in the eyes,” she peels one of Tuuri’s eyelids up to inspect the white globe of her sclera “Well you definitely don’t have a concussion, and the only excuse to be lying on the ground like this after that…that frigging kiss of a punch is a concussion. And you weren’t even the one who got hit! What the Hel, Hotakainen, get up.”

Tuuri groans, but sits up. She bunches snow in her fist and blows on it to melt the snow faster “How do you do this all the time?”

“I just know what I’m doing. You will too, soon.”

“How often do you think I’m gonna be attacked by actual humans, Sigrun? I would get it if this was defence against spirits and stuff, but you expect me to be attacked by regular people? Do I have to be afraid of my own kind as well as all these sick things now?”

“You’d be surprised,” Sigrun passes an arm underneath each of Tuuri’s and hauls her to her feet as she straightens up herself “Gods, you’re heavy.”

“I’m not heavy. I’m curvy.”

“I mean in terms of how much gravity wants to keep you on the ground. Ok, stand on your own.”

She does, grudgingly, and quickly assumes a defensive stance once she sees Sigrun is not going to give her any more time to catch her breath.

“I still fail to see why learning to defend myself from people is necessary.” protests Tuuri, her fists in front of her chest, ready to block or lash out.

Sigrun grins- the scary grin she normally reserves for Emil when she’s about to tell him another horrifying war story “You’re about to see why.”  
And she promptly attempts to kick Tuuri in the head.

It’s an unbelievably high kick. Seriously, Tuuri did not know the human hip joint allowed such fluid and flexible movement. Tuuri screams and drops to her knees. The kick flies well over her head. Panicked, she can think of no way to get away from Sigrun apart from scrambling between her widely-set legs. This prompts a yelp of protests from Sigrun, but Tuuri has made her escape before she can snap her knees shut around Tuuri’s waist.

Sigrun sighs and watches Tuuri’s retreating rump “If I were a crueller person I would just kick you up the ass right now.” 

“Sanctuary!” screeches Tuuri, flinging herself behind Emil.

“Maybe you should pick this up later?” suggests Emil gently.

“Alright, good idea. Tuuri you can get up now.”

But Tuuri will not leave the relative safety that the small of Emil’s back provides until Sigrun has gone back inside the Tank to towel off the snow-melt.  
“That was terrifying.”

Emil turns to face her, his face as close to stern as she has ever seen it “You know what’s going to be more terrifying? Not being able to defend yourself from some jerk that gets it in their head to beat you up.”

Tuuri snorts “I live in Keuruu. The only people that get in fights in Keuruu are bar-flies getting pissy with each other over their favourite stools.”

“You’re not in Keuruu anymore. You’re not going to stay there for the rest of your life, are you?”

“Oh gods no! I hope not!”

“Stop being so flippant for a minute and just listen to me.” and then Emil lifts up his shirt, which Tuuri did not see coming. Only up to his navel, though, and just to the left side of this he points out a small flick of scar tissue “You see the scar?”

“Yeah.” she does not like where this is going.

“I got punched in the stomach so hard that I couldn’t breathe for about ten minutes. Broke the skin too.”

Tuuri is quiet for a moment. There is a reason, she knows, that Emil does not like to talk extensively about his time in the Cleansers. He was seen for what he was at the time; a rich kid with an ego to massage and an expectation that others would help him, because that was the way he had been raised. She does not think the Cleansers would have been particularly forgiving of that, or willing to look past what was on the surface to get to know the nice guy underneath all that blow-hard nonsense.

“What did the other guy look like?”

Emil smiles and lets his shirt fall “Pretty damned smug, until I puked all over her shoes. She was too grossed out to retaliate.”

“So you won?”

“Kinda. Just be careful, ok? You’re a really, uh, nice person, but that’s not gonna be enough for some people.” Emil pauses, gathering his thoughts, and looks over her shoulder “I gotta go do a thing.”

“Stay safe,” as she helps him into her coat, she catches a glimpse of what he was looking at before.

“Why are you staring at me?” says Lalli irritably.

“No reason,” she grins widely “You behave yourself.”

If looks were bullets, Lalli would make a sponge of his cousin.

For some reason, this little moment gives her a spurt of courage. Hey, look at Lalli doing things outside of his comfort zone, like existing with other people! Tuuri should challenge herself too.  
But some challenges are best taken from the side, as oppose to a charge from the front. 

 

Sigrun doesn’t see it coming. Which is surprising, considering ‘it’ is just under 80kg of compact Finnish fury hurtling at her from the snow. No matter how experienced the soldier or inexperienced the attacker, sometimes, the balances skew in favour of the latter of the two and there is nothing to be done about it. Except, upon being knocked to the ground, screaming-

“WHOA WHAT THE HEL-”

“Yes!” crows Tuuri, planted on Sigrun’s back in the most triumphant straddle ever seen “That’s where you’re going!”

Sigrun’s low growl is muffled by the snow “So that’s how you want to play it.”

The retaliation is swift and brutal. In one smooth, snake-like movement, Sigrun manages to pitch Tuuri off her back. The younger woman goes down with a shriek of surprise. Sigrun is not finished with her revenge yet; she pushes herself into a full plank on her bare palms, her legs straight behind her, and scuttles backwards in this way with an alarming agility.  
There is no escape. Tuuri’s face is clamped between Sigrun’s boots, her head forced to the snow until she bonks it on the ground. Sigrun bonks Tuuri’s head again and again and again, cackling like a madwoman.

The cackles summon Mikkel from the depths of the Tank. He takes one look at what’s going on and shouts “Reynir! You need to see this!”

By the time Reynir joins him on the front-steps, Tuuri has fought back and is now biting Sigrun’s ankle through her left boot as hard as her herbivore’s teeth will allow her.  
Reynir’s mouth drops open “What?”

“Don’t question this lunacy. Just enjoy it.”

“Bad skald!” Sigrun thumps Tuuri on the forehead with the flat of her palm “Let go!”

Through several layers of leather and now nearing flesh, Tuuri produces a defiant “Neffuuuuarrr!”

“Should we stop them?”

Mikkel puts an arm out in front of Reynir to block him “Reynir, I will never forgive you if you interrupt this.”

“But they could hurt each other-”

“Never.”

He falls silent, clasping Mikkel’s arm for comfort.

Somehow, Sigrun has gotten to her feet. Even more confusingly, Tuuri is now on her back. Hanging on like an angry, belligerent shell. With one hand she anchors herself to Sigrun’s shoulder, and the other flails around Sigrun’s face. She is not sure what kind of damage she wants to do. Only certain that she is determined to cause it.  
Meanwhile, in an effort to dislodge her attacker, Sigrun spins in rapid circles. It doesn’t work. Tuuri has resolved that nothing short of a broken arm is going to stop her from subduing her opponent.

“Is this, like, when moose fight?” mutters Reynir “For a mate?”

Mikkel snorts “Perhaps more like stags. The alpha and a challenger attempting to take control of the herd. I wouldn’t worry about Tuuri attempting to mate with us…me, anyway.”

“What?”

Mikkel is spared from having to answer when Sigrun finally peels Tuuri’s hand from her shoulder and, in a moment of sublime strength, whips Tuuri over her shoulder. The younger woman goes flying and lands harmlessly in an ample snow-bank.  
Chest heaving, Sigrun raises her fists “Come on then!”

Tuuri struggles upright “You ready for me?” her vision is spotted by dizziness and the insane urge to push Sigrun into the snow and scrub her face in it.

“Oh I’m ready!”

“I don’t think you can handle me!”

“I can handle you and more!” barks Sigrun.

Tuuri lets out a wordless bellow and charges. 

 

“Ok,” wheezes Sigrun “I am satisfied you know how to defend yourself. Basically.”

“Why thank you.”  
Tuuri is still face-down in a deep snow-drift, but can be heard clearly.

“We just gotta hone that into some quick fighting skills. You can’t do that….that wild boar charge thing to other people, especially if you’re fighting more than one person.” Sigrun tries without success to dislodge her fist from the tree.  
During the climax of the fight, Tuuri feinted and Sigrun ended up plunging her hand into the tree trunk up to the wrist. She stands there, trapped, whispering profuse apologies to the poor cedar.

“Need some help?” asks Mikkel.

“Yes please.”

While Mikkel parts Sigrun from the tree (he wraps his arms around her waist and frees her with one mighty yank), Reynir trots over and helps Tuuri to her feet. He dusts the snow from her shoulders and face and makes clucking noises that remind Tuuri of an agitated hen on her nest.

“Good fight,” there’s a spark in Sigrun’s eyes that wasn’t there before “You’ve got a lot of energy.”

Tuuri glows with pride “Thanks.”

“Here I was thinking you were a little soft civvie.”

“I’m happy to dispel that illusion.” Tuuri tries to flick her hair, but realises hers is too short, so settles for flicking Reynir’s braid instead.

Sigrun is right; that was a good fight.


	5. Mikkel: book-buddy, good friend (and emotional guru and understands things and is strangely wise)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tuuri and Mikkel confront that elephant in the room that always exists between stoic people- emotions, the disgusting things.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Emotions. Sometimes you just can't eat them.

There is a certain rule among sentient, social creatures. Not a spoken rule, nor even a rule, but a fact which is widely and silently accepted as the absolute truth. When two or several creatures are trapped in a small space with each other and have no communication from whatever society might exist externally, one of two things will happen.  
Firstly and unfortunately the most likely, the creatures will sicken of each other’s nonsense and come into conflict. This may result in a bloodbath if the species is particularly known for violence. Secondly and more rarely, the creatures will grow to like each other very much and get along with as close to a perfect harmony as the circumstances allow.

Tuuri finishes reading the passage from what she is fairly certain is a psychology textbook, and looks expectantly at Mikkel “So which one are we?”

“The killing one, of course. Have you not seen me sharpening my knife in the corner in preparation for my vengeance?”

Giggling, Tuuri flips the book shut and passes it over to Mikkel “Here, this can be catalogued with the others now.”

He accepts the book and adds it to an ever-growing stack of books at the corner of the desk- ones whose category defies their current system of categorisation, which is at the moment split among ‘medical science’ and ‘technological science’ and ‘I don’t know what this is but it looks valuable’. The latter is mostly composed of Sigrun’s finds.

“You should read through that book later. It’s kind of interesting to see how humans thought of each other back then.” Tuuri pulls a massive volume concerning fungi over to her and wipes some dust from the old pages “Gods, the way they talk about our species, you’d think we spend all of our mental energy on mastering blood-lust.”

“I did have a look at that yesterday. Did you read about that experiment in the prison?”

Tuuri grimaces “Oh gods, that was gross, wasn’t it? The way they just fell apart? That would never happen today.”

“I agree. I believe we do function more compassionately as a species now that we have a common enemy who makes themselves so easy to despise.”

“You said it- hey, do you think these illustrations are salvageable?” Tuuri holds up the book and points to a detailed diagram of mycelium “Most of the stuff in here we already know or don’t need to know. There’s a lot about foreign fauna. I just wonder if we can put the illustrations to good use?”

Mikkel squints “Well they are quite beautiful.”

“Are we here for the beautiful, though?”

“Partially, I suppose. Put that to the side. We’ll worry about it later.”

At some point during the haze of cataloguing and reading and debating, Mikkel and Tuuri made an unspoken decision that they would prioritise knowledge over collectability. The parameters of what ‘knowledge’ is has been argued somewhat, out loud and engaged.  
Tuuri is all for taking books of fairy tales from any culture they come across, while Mikkel would prefer to leave the space open for books on technology and agriculture. Tuuri defends herself by pointing out that at some point their world is likely to come into contact with another, and they should at least know something about their neighbours, near or far, when that day comes. The best way, she says, to know a culture is through their bed-time stories. Mikkel, on the other hand, just doesn’t hold much with magic. He has seen a few displays which he cannot pass off as anything but magical, but is not quite ready to prostrate himself at the feet of either pantheon.

So they have reached a compromise. Tuuri can have one bed-time story or best-seller or memoire for every two science or engineering or language book Mikkel finds. And Mikkel has certainly found a lot of the latter, in the same vein of thinking as Tuuri. He would prefer to be able to speak to whoever they may encounter in the future rather than recount their stories from memory.  
Sigrun sees the wisdom in this and has made it a small mission of hers to collect as many translation dictionaries and phrase books as possible. As a result the Tank is now stuffed with dictionaries to the point that they have become a significant hazard. Yesterday, Lalli tripped over one lying in the middle of the hall, and just this morning Reynir accidentally knocked a stack with his elbow and brought down from the top a huge Polynesian dictionary, knocking himself out cold for a solid thirty seconds.

“Here’s a Farsi dictionary. Think we’ll need it?”

Mikkel contemplates the little leather-bound book “I’m torn. I know plenty of people that speak Farsi at home. Any number of them could be called upon to translate if we do, say, get visited by a helicopter full of Iranians or something. However I am also sure that we could use this. What do you think?”

Tuuri glances down at the book “Uh, I don’t know. I’ve only met two people that spoke Farsi.”

“Keuruu is a little bit of a boondock for multi-culturalism.”

She sticks her tongue out at him “Tell that to our China town. Let’s just take it, just in case.”

The book is set on top of the Polynesian dictionary at a precarious angle, but neither Mikkel nor Tuuri are particularly worried about the spongey little thing conking Reynir on the head. 

The next few books are discarded; a tattered gossip magazine found between the pages of an old English erotica, the biography of a trout-lipped woman pouting at the reader from the cover, a tourist’s guidebook to Rome and a pamphlet that has somehow gotten mixed in with the rest, advising parents how best to accommodate a child who has just come out as something other than straight.

Tuuri thinks twice and retrieves the erotica from the ‘burn pile’ “This might be worth something.”

“It might.”

“Are you comfortable with the idea of carrying some old porn back?”

Mikkel cocks a thick eyebrow, his frown thin and disgusted “Not quite. We bring that back a score of a dozen miles from the depths of the Rash, just for some weird old rich person to add to their spank-bank? I would prefer not to.”

“You’re probably right. Sometimes I wonder what Sigrun is thinking when she brings this stuff back.”

“About how to kill her next troll, I imagine.”

They share a chuckle at the expense of their captain.

“You know,” Tuuri’s grin is conspiratorial “Sigrun speaks and reads English, right?”

“Right.” he accepts a battered manufacturer’s manual from her.

“I saw her reading a book the other day. Weeping over it, in fact.”

“Oh, really? What was it?”

“Well I can’t read English very well, but I’m pretty sure the title had something to do with kites?”

“So in all likelihood Sigrun was crying over a guide on how to make kites?”

Tuuri nods “I’ve never seen her cry before. Unless you count the times she’s laughing so hard at her own dirty joke that she cries, or that time that Reynir fell in the snow-well up to his waist and she couldn’t stand because she was laughing so hard.”

Mikkel shrugs “I believe crying is a necessity sometimes, given where we are.”

She glances around the study “What, buried in books? Maybe tears of joy.”

“No, in the Silent World.”

“Oh.”

He squints at her suspiciously “Haven’t you had a small emotional break-down yet?”

“Um,” Tuuri casts her mind back over the last few months. Emotional, yes, she has been very emotional at certain times. It is hard not to be emotional when you are trapped with five other people and a cat and have no outlet for your own frustrations other than the same damned clerical work you did at home. Well, except for however you chose to drive the giant war machine which is suddenly under your command “Most of my emotional moments have been solved by reversing over a troll a few times.”

He seems concerned, rather than amused as she hoped he would be “Is that so? I’ve wept like a baby at least three time since we set off.”

Tuuri stares “Uh, when?”

“Late at night, mostly, when the rest of you are asleep.”

Tuuri does not know how to ask Mikkel if he is alright without also expressing surprise that he has tear-ducts which he uses. She kind of assumed that Mikkel was made of stone on the inside.  
“Why?”

Mikkel smiles at her in a way that is either inviting her to share his pain, or pitying “A number of reasons. I miss my family, I miss my partner-”

“Partner?” sputters Tuuri. What kind of person does it take to enchant Mikkel so much that he would consent to dating them, let alone making a life partner of them?

“Yes, partner. Also, as you no doubt have noticed, we are surrounded by the dead and their ruins at all times. That can be a little over-whelming in large doses.”

“Oh. Um, I guess so.” Tuuri bites her bottom lip “I guess I just haven’t been…well, been thinking about it like that. I’m here with half of my family. The other half of my family is in Mora, waiting for us. All I ever wanted to do since I turned, like, eleven, was leave Keuruu and see the world. And I’m doing that, even if it is the part of the world that’s rotted from the Rash. I’m finally using my Swedish and Icelandic. I’m finally learning how to punch, I’m looking at all kinds of books from the old world, I have a cat that loves me- apart from Lalli- and I’m around people whose company I enjoy. I’m ok.”

“That’s encouraging.” Mikkel laughs a little “If you should feel the need to weep like the infant, though, please recognise it as the natural urge it is.”

She smiles back at him “Got it.”  
In truth, she does want to cry a little bit. Admitting to crying or being aware of their emotions at all is hard for a lot of the men she knows- Onni, for example, while he is in touch with his sense of fear and regret all of the time, it pains him to admit when he is comfortable with someone or something. Lowering his guard is both stupid, he seems to think, and improper for the male head of a family. Even if that family is basically a butterball skald and a scout who is more cat than human.

On the other hand, here is Mikkel, at ease with telling her he sometimes breaks down, assumes he foetal position, and cries for his siblings and his partner (who has to be at least part-bear, the more Tuuri thinks about what kind of charm would charm Mikkel) while everyone else is asleep.  
Brave, even, to recognise that fear within yourself and allow it to come out, to lose control to it for a few moments.

Tuuri finds she has said this last little bit out loud, and flushes red at her own boldness.

Mikkel is impressed too “That is one way to look at it, I suppose. I thought of it as a necessary bit of snivelling.”

“A brave bit of snivelling.” insists Tuuri.

Her courage breaks. She looks away from her friend and dives underneath the table for a thick home-doctor, which she passes to him wordlessly.  
Soon they have fallen back into the comfortable rhythm of cataloguing and discarding. What they have said does hang in the air between them, but it is more like an annoyingly bright butterfly than any kind of wasp or otherwise menacing and winged thing.

When Tuuri at last feels the burn of tears waiting behind her eyes, she feels totally secure in jumping up, rounding the table and burying her face in Mikkel’s shoulder to cry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's the end to the relationships challenge. Thanks to Lazy8 for organising it, and to everyone who read it and left kudos or comments. I'm off to go plot a meticulous plot for my next fic. Be seeing you!


End file.
